Coconut Macaroons

My sister gave me this recipe a few nights ago. I was in the mood to bake this one this afternoon and realised the recipe she gave me didn't have the exact measurement of the flour and butter. I was trying to reach her via yahoo messenger but she was obviously not online so I had to make my own version of macaroons hehehe.. The recipe my sister gave me makes 100 macaroons using the tiny muffin paper cups and I didn't want 100 macaroons. So I then made my own measurements. I had 2 cups of dessicated coconut, almost a cup of spelt wholewheat flour, 3 eggs, 1 cup of skim condensed milk, 1 teaspoonful of baking powder, more or less 100 grams of butter, a pinch of salt. I baked it until brown in a preheated oven (160 degrees).

Daughter and hubby love it! It's not too sweet and it is really nice to eat while hot and with a cup of tea! 

"My first attempt of Puto Ube"

A good friend of mine made halo-halo when she had a dinner with us a few months ago. She brought ube jam with her to add in the halo-halo and left the rest of the jam to me yay! So when my sister asked me if I am interested in the Puto Ube recipe last night, I said yes! As I was searching for the banana cake recipe, I realised I had written down a puto recipe (without ube) in my journal a few years back. I didn't even get a chance to try cooking it. It calls for 4 egg whites.

While preparing and mixing the banana cake my husband asked what was the liquid thingy in the bowl inside the fridge (I used the egg yolks for the carbonara sauce 2 nights ago). I said it's 4 egg whites and there you go, I told myself to cook the puto after my banana cake. It taste good but I wish it had risen more as I mistakenly used baking soda instead of baking powder. I also added 1/4 cup of ube jam. I will try this again perhaps using my sister's recipe. For the meantime I am not going to share you the recipe for now until I get the right texture of puto hehehe...

(Halo-halo from Tagalog word halò, "mix") is a popular Filipino dessert that is a mixture of shaved ice and evaporated milk to which are added various boiled sweet beans and fruits, and served in a tall glass or bowl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo-halo .

Banana Cake

Yesterday I was in the supermarket and was tempted to buy a banana cake, I am glad I didn't. I prefer to bake my own when I have time and the energy so I know what's in my cake. Well today I was in the mood to cook! My husband likes spelt wholemeal flour for his breads and cakes if he can. This flour is produced by removing the firm outer husk then roller-milling the inner kernel of grain. The end product makes for an easy digestible food when baked. It retains a substantial proportion of wheat's nutrients and full dietary fibre and high in nutrition and has a nutty flavour. I also like to use honey instead of sugar and some organic stuff for my other ingredients. Below is the recipe that I have been following, I have substituted some of the ingredients according to our liking so please feel free to do the same.

1/2 cup Plain flour

1/2 cup Butter

1/2 cup Sugar

1 cup mashed Banana or 2 medium size banana

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 cup Sour Cream

Mix everything well and bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees). Bake for about 45 minutes or until it is cooked.

Carbonara Pasta served with Scotch Egg

We had a bacon in the fridge for 4 days now. My husband wants to have bacon and egg for breakfast one morning and then that's it. I only realised he bought a kilo of bacon when I checked the fridge last night and we only cooked a few pieces of it. So then I thought of a carbonara pasta. I served it with scotch egg because I always want to try this one. Hubby and daughter loves it!

Once again, I didn't measure my ingredients but here's what I did.

CARBONARA PASTA

- I heated the pan with the olive oil and cooked 3 cloves of garlic and probably 150 to 200 grams of rindless bacon

- I whisked 2 egg yolks, 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of thickened cream and added it in the pan for 3 minutes in low heat

- I added the cooked spaghetti pasta and combined everything

- Season with salt and pepper IF necessary

- Turn off the heat and add parmesan cheese. Toss everything again until well combined.

SIMPLE SCOTCH EGG

- Cover a boiled egg (without the shell of course) with a barbeque rissole. You can also use sausage minced.

-Spray with canola oil on top, cover with foil; and bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees) until brown

Minced Beef Pie

We have been having chicken after my taste for chicken came back. To those of you who haven't read my last few entries, I stopped eating chicken during my first trimester of pregnancy. The taste of the chicken meat leaves a taste in my mouth and it makes me feel sick. So when we found out I can now enjoy a chicken dish, we have been having it everyday. There is a saying that says "too much of everything is not good" and it is quite true ;) . I decided to have meat for dinner yesterday and I thought of this personalised minced beef pie. My husband and daughter loves this very much!

These days though I don't bother measuring my ingredients and I go by whatever right taste I can get. But I can tell you what I did.

-I heated my pan and cooked the beef in the pan with olive oil until brown.

-I added 4 or 5 tablespoons of Napoletana Pasta sauce. I made sure though that it was just enough, not too dry. You can use other pasta sauce if you like.

-I also added Worchestire sauce, Soy sauce and salt (the pasta sauce I used wasn't very tasty). You only have to add the these sauces and seasoning if you are not satisfied with the pasta sauce you are using.

-Spray the muffin pans with canola oil.

- Cut the defrosted shortcrust pastry into 4 pieces and put it in the muffin pans. I only made 6 pies as I made sure I don't overcrowd my pastry in the pan.

- Get 3 teaspoons of minced beef and fill in the shortcrust pasty.

- Cut defrosted puff pastry just enough to cover the top of the pie.

- Prick 2 holes over the puff pastry and brush with egg.

- Bake in a preheated oven (180 degrees) until pastry is golden brown.

-Serve hot.

Minced Beef and Spinach Roll

I was going to make a fried rice or a fried noodles with my minced beef but I feel like having spinach with it. I thought of shepherd's pie but I only have 2 potatoes left and it is not going to be enough as a topping. A puff pastry came to my mind and decided to use it instead. It came out really good and there was no left over! I am thinking of making another one, one of these days ;) .

You need:

Onion (minced)
Olive oil (1 tbsp)
Minced beef (200 grams)
Baby spinach leaves (125 grams)
Bolognaise sauce (approximately 3 tbps)
Puff pastry (1 piece)
Parmesan cheese
Light tasty cheese (cheddar)

What to do:

1. Heat oil in the pan and cook onion and beef. Once beef is brown add the sauce and spinach. Please add more seasoning according to your taste. Let it cool.

2. Place pastry sheet on a non stick mat. Spread the cooked beef and spinach over the pastry sheet then sprinkle some parmesan cheese. Roll the sheet. Pour the remaining liquid of the sauce on the top of the roll and sprinkle some light tasty.

3. Bake the roll in pre-heated oven (200 degrees).

Chicken Tikka Masala and Rice with Carrots and Parsley

I had this packet of Tikka Masala sauce in my pantry for months now, so I decided to use it today. I have been avoiding chicken for months now and I told myself to be brave enough to have some last Sunday. I was happy it didn't leave any bad taste in my mouth anymore so chicken and fish was in my shopping list yesterday. So then, we had chicken tikka masala for dinner and it tasted lovely! Kindly follow the instructions at the back of the packet and I think adding cream made the dish more enjoyable.

To make the rice all you need are:

1 cup of rice
1 Tbsp olive oil
a pinch of salt
grated carrot (medium size)
dried parsley

What To Do:

1. Wash rice with water at least 3 times. Add 1 and 1/2 cup of water, oil and a pinch of salt.
2. Cook in the  rice cooker (I am using rice cooker here).
3. Once cooked add grated carrots and parsley.
4. Add more oil if rice is too dry.

*For some odd reason I couldn't upload another picture tonight. I will try again tomorrow and if it still doesn't work and you would like to try the Tikka Masala sauce, it is called "Passage to India", Tikka Masala simmer sauce.

My Cravings Continuous

I am now 5 months pregnant, hurray! I was hoping I can eat anything now but it seems like I still avoid some food including chicken. I tried a small piece of chicken 2 days ago, it was alright but I wasn't really crazy over it.

Ginisang Sardinas

Ginasang sardinas is cooked in olive oil, garlic, tomato, onion, a little bit of water and a can of sardines in tomato sauce.

Chicken Macaroni Soup

I know I said I was avoiding chicken but my husband left a big piece of chicken before he went to Melbourne. I felt bad throwing it away so I added it in the soup. I didn't eat the chicken though. This was cooked the same way as "Chicken with Quinoa Pasta soup" recipe that I posted almost 3 years ago.  http://myloveforfood.blogspot.com/2007/10/chicken-with-quinoa-pasta-soup.html

May's Sauteed Prawn

This blog serves as my recipe book as well. There are some recipes here that I don't have in my cooking book so I come back here to check how it is cooked http://myloveforfood.blogspot.com/2008/10/mays-sauteed-prawn.html .



Kamote Cue. This is sweet potato fried in oil with sugar.

Ginataan is a famous snack in the Philippines. This is cooked with coconut milk, coconut cream, sweet potato, purple yam, banana, bilo-bilo (glutinous ground rice and water) and sugar.

Scone with Cream and Strawberry jam

A favorite of mine when I am at the shopping centre and hungry.

My Cravings

I am 15 weeks pregnant and the Filipino food makes me very very happy. I remember staying back in the Philippines for 2 months when I was pregnant with my 1st child, that was year 2004. I didn't know how to cook Filipino food that time and I was very desperate to eat some. I was even going to bring my Aunty Carmen to Bangkok, Thailand where we lived during that time. The cravings came back now, luckily I have learned how to cook most of the Filipino food. Below are some of the food I cooked for my satisfaction;

Tortang Talong

"Tortang talong" is an eggplant cooked with beaten eggs, salt and oil.

Tsamporado with dried fish

Tsamporado is cooked with cocoa, glutinous rice, water and sugar. I eat this delicious tsamporado with a fried dried fish. There are different sorts of dried fish but the ones on the photo is my Mum's favorite dried fish and it became my favorite as well. Remember the saying "like mother, like daughter"? 

Pork Adobo

I refuse to eat chicken nowadays. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth but I so wanted to have 'adobo'. Adobo is a very popular dish in the Philippines. It is marinated in garlic, peppercorn, bay leaves, vinegar and soy sauce. After 30 minutes or so, heat the oil in the pan and fry pork or chicken. I always like to add the marinated sauce when the meat is cooked. Cook it for another 2 minutes or until the sauce is reduce.

Pancit

Pancit is simply noodles. You can use vermicelli noodles or a yellow noodles. We combine both sometimes but I only have vermicelli in the pantry. I know I said I refuse to eat chicken nowadays but then I had a bowl of left over in the fridge. My husband had chicken but he left for Queensland the following day and I felt bad throwing it away. So I decided to add it in my pancit with snow peas, broccoli, carrots, garlic, onions, oil, water, beef stock, soy sauce, oyster sauce and pepper. I had to put the chicken on the side though when I had my pancit ;) .

A Delicious Roast Chicken

I baked a marinated chicken yesterday and it was really good! Unfortunately it has been marinated when I bought it at ALDI store. To those of you who doesn't live in Australia or Germany, ALDI's is a great store that is also awesome for the family's budget but the quality of their products are just amazing.

Normally I would just bake my chicken without any seasoning at all. However if I have a little more time to make a delicious baked chicken this is what I do.

You need:

1 Whole chicken
Salt
Peppercorn steak seasoning or any other seasoning you have in your pantry
Butter
1 stick Celery
1 small Carrot
1 whole Onion
1 whole Garlic

What To Do:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
1. Wash the chicken then pat with kitchen towel.
2. Rub salt and peppercorn steak seasoning in the whole chicken as well as inside the cavity.
3. Cut celery and carrots into chunky pieces. Stab the garlic a few times to allow the garlic's flavour into the chicken.
4. Put the celery, carrots, whole garlic, whole onion and a few pieces of butter inside the cavity.
5. Insert some butter into the breast skin as well.
6. Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours depending in the size of the chicken.
7. Serve it with salad or your favorite steam vegetables.

Chocolate Croissant

A very good friend of mine who is a brilliant cook taught me this recipe. She came by at our house one time to bring me some samples of this and my daughter had 3 pieces of it right away. Thank you for the recipe Joy! It is very easy to make and it is a great snack for your children in the afternoon. You can bake a few in advance and put it in the fridge if you wish to have some the following day. You can also freeze it so you have some snacks ready anytime.

You only need 3 ingredients for this recipe:

Puff pastry
Chocolate for cooking
Icing Sugar or powdered chocolate

What To Do

1. Cut one pastry into 4 pieces or cut the quarter of the pastry into half if you want it smaller.
2. Cut a small piece of chocolate, enough to put inside the pastry. Make sure the pastry is not too soft to fold so you can lift it on the baking tray.
3. Fold the pastry into triangles.
4. Bake until golden brown.
5. Sprinkle the icing sugar on the top of the cooked croissants and serve hot.

Some food that I cooked!

I have cooked some great food in the last 4 months. My problem is that, I have no time to measure my ingredients :( . I would normally cook the dinner at around 5pm (Australia time) and we would eat it at 6pm or when it is ready. That means it is impossible to take note of the measurements *sigh. Here are some of them;

Above is Osso Buco cooked in tomato, carrots and peas.

Glazed ham

Embutido (minced pork, boiled egg, carrots, capsicum, raisins etc..)

Maja Blanca (cornstarch, coconut cream, corn kernels, condensed milk)

Beef Siopao (Beef Hot Buns)

Bistik (Beef Steak)

I was chatting with my lovely friend Lhita who lives in Singapore and told me she still couldn’t get the right taste for Bistik. I cooked this a few times and even my maid in Jakarta, Indonesia knows how to cook this now. I guess I have asked her so many times that she knows it by heart lol.

I would normally buy beef tenderloin for this recipe but saw a “Snitzel Beef” at the supermarket. This is what I get when I want to make a beef schnitzel. According to Wikianswers, a schnitzel is a thin 'escalope' of meat, usually veal or pork that is first floured, eggwashed then breadcrumbed before frying. Nowadays beef and chicken are the most popular for schnitzel.

You Need:

Beef (half a kilo)

Cornstarch – 1 tsp

Worcestershire sauce – 2 tsp

Soy sauce – ½ cup

Lime juice – 1tsp

Garlic – 7 cloves

Whole peppercorns – 20 or more if you like

Onions – 2 big ones

Cooking oil

2 Tbsp water

How?

1. Pound meat with a meat mallet until it’s thin. Be careful not to tear the meat.

2. In a bowl put in the pounded meat, cornstarch, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, garlic, peppercorns and lime. Mix together and marinate for 30 minutes or more if desired.

3. Heat oil in a pan and cook the cut onions. Transfer to a bowl or another container.

4. Heat more oil probably 2 tbsp and cook the meat leaving the marinated juice.

5. Add more oil if necessary if there isn’t enough oil to cook all the meat.

6. Transfer all the meat in a separate bowl or if you want you can just put it on top of the cooked onions.

7. In a low heat, pour the marinated sauce into the same pan (where you cooked the meat) with a fine cooking strainer to get the liquid of the marinated sauce.

8. Put back cooked meat and onions.

9. Cook for a minute or 2 then add the water.

10. Serve hot and enjoy!

Chicken Wings Sinigang

I am having mostly Filipino food these days since hubby is not here to eat it hehehe... I defrosted the chicken wings today and was thinking of deep fry chicken wings for dinner. As I checked the fridge I had some vegetables that need to be cooked or else it will go to waste as I am planning to experiment on some other recipes that I saw while browsing the internet 2 days ago. So I decided to cook sinigang instead made of left over vegetables.

I had:

1tsp cooking oil

1 onion (medium size)

1 big or 2 tomato (chunky cuts)

8 chicken wings

3 cups of water

1 chicken cube

3 big bunches of Bukchoy

1 eggplant (medium)

1 carrot (small)

Fish sauce

Lime juice

How:

1. Heat oil in the pot and sautéed onion and tomato.

2. Add chicken wings then pour the water adding the chicken cube. Cover the pot and let it boil for 5 to 10 minutes or until chicken wings are almost cook.

3. Add carrot, fish sauce (little at a time) and lime juice. Let it simmer.

4. I only used lime juice to lessen the strong smell of fish sauce, although I admit it gives flavour as well. You need to keep adding fish sauce and lime juice until you get your desired taste.

5. Add eggplant and bukchoy. Cover for 3 minutes and the food is ready!

Adobong Manok and Ginisang Togue

Hubby is not fond of Filipino dish so I l eventually learn how to cook most of his favourite food even if I only know how to fry my food when we got married. I only started learning how to cook my native dish 4 years ago in Singapore. I had a group of Filipino friends there who loves to cook! So they became my inspiration to learn more about my food.

For our lunch today (hubby is not here), we had adobong manok and ginisang togue. Adobong manok is also known as “chicken adobo” and adobo means vinegar marinade if I am not mistaken. This is cooked with garlic, whole peppercorns, bay leaf, vinegar, soy sauce and oil for frying. I unfortunately didn’t get the right measurements today to share, sorry. I kept adding soy sauce and vinegar as I go on and it tasted so great! My classmate in college who now lives in Texas told me she couldn’t get the right taste when she cooks her adodo. Reyma if you happen to read this, I recommend that you try adobong manok from Pinoy Cook   http://pinoycook.net/myras-chicken-adobo/ . This is so easy to follow, not our usual version of cooking adobo but I promise that you get the taste you are looking for.

Ginisang togue is a sautéed mung bean sprout cooked in oil, garlic, onion, togue, bukchoy, water, and soy sauce. There are different ways to cook it but I opted for simple ingredients (which I normally do ;) ).

Plum Pudding with Vanilla Custard

We wanted to have plum pudding as a dessert for Christmas dinner, however we were not able to eat it  because everyone is full. I was hoping to serve it the following day which is another celebrated day in Australia; they call this day “Boxing Day”. Oh no, they don’t fight inside the ring with their boxing gloves on lol. I asked hubby and my in-laws why it’s called Boxing Day and unfortunately most of them have no idea why it was called boxing, they said there were a few stories blah blah blah . So, I went to find it myself instead.


According to the Wikipedia, this day is also celebrated in United Kingdom, New Zealand and amongst other countries. The traditional recorded celebration of Boxing Day has long included giving money and other gifts to those who were needy and in service positions. The European tradition has been dated to the middle Ages, but the exact origin is unknown and there are some claims that it goes back to the late Roman/early Christian era; metal boxes were placed outside churches used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen.[4] In the United Kingdom it certainly became a custom of the nineteenth century Victorians for tradesmen to collect their "Christmas boxes" or gifts in return for good and reliable service throughout the year on the day after Christmas.[5] However, the exact etymology of the term "Boxing" is unclear, with several competing theories, none of which is definitively true.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day

So there.


Going back to the pudding, we invited my Mum in-law, Mum’s sister who happened to visit her so they can spend a New Year together (how sweet!), my brother in-law and his wife for dinner the 2nd January. A few minutes after dinner my hubby approached and asked me what I prepared for dessert so I told him “pudding”! He agreed right away! So I started boiling the water in the pot because it takes 45 minutes to get a warm pudding. All I did was boil enough water in the pot to make sure the tin is almost covered. Once we put the tin inside the pot let it simmer in a low heat. The photo below has been simmering for 35 minutes so most of the water had evaporated already. Instructions are on the back of the tin so you will be alright if you want to try the same brand next Christmas. Just let me know if it was in fact 45 or 50 minutes because I am not sure now lol. We had 2,000 grams of vanilla custard in the fridge but the seven of us only used half of it, that’s 2 small bottles of custard. We had a bit of left over because I believe this is good for 10 people.

My verdict is this.... it was the nicest plum pudding I have tasted from a can! It was moist and simply perfect! I will never hesitate to buy the Big Sister brand again next Christmas and paired it with Oak Vanilla Traditional Custard from Dairy Farmers.

Now if you excuse me, I need to run around the house to get rid of the excess fat I have gained since last month hahaha...

Eggplant in Honey and Soy Sauce

My husband’s Christmas gift is a new camera hurray! That means I can capture the food that I cooked, if I am not too hungry to put them in my mouth first before I can grab the camera lol. Well it happens most of the time just like our lunch and dinner yesterday. Today though I managed to take a photo of this dish that I cooked for lunch, I was very hungry but I told myself it will only take a few seconds hehehe. Now I like my eggplant to be soggy and brown in colour for this dish so if you prefer to see a little bit of whitest colour in your eggplant you may do so. This dish is for 1 serving but if you don’t eat as much as me then guess what the left over tasted much better.

By the way, I don’t normally follow the exact measurements of any recipes unless I am intimidated in the dish like my disaster roast turkey for our Christmas dinner last month. I am not going into details about that hehehe.. So may I suggest that you add a little bit of water and honey first, and then keep adding more of each until you are satisfied with the taste? I eat this with steam rice and a grilled salmon. Yummy!

You need:

1 tsp Olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 small Onion

1 big tomato or 2 medium size tomato

1 Eggplant – medium size – cut into bite size

¼ cup Soy Sauce (I always use Kikkoman)

½ cup Water

1 ½ tsp Honey

1. Heat oil in the pan then sauté garlic, then the chopped onion once garlic is almost brown.

2. Add tomato then the eggplant and sauté for another minute or so.

3. Add the eggplant stirring for a minute then pour the soy sauce over. Cover the pan and leave it until it boils in a medium heat. Please do check to make sure the soy sauce doesn’t dry up.

4. Taste it and add a little bit of water if the taste of soy sauce is too strong for you. Add more if you wish then let it simmer for another minute.

5. You can then add honey probably 1 tsp to start with. If you think the soy sauce was still strong add more water. Let it simmer again for 3 minutes.

6. Keep adjusting the taste by adding more honey and water until you are satisfied with the taste.

7. Serve it hot.